CLAS Lecture Series: Women's Political Participation After Civil War: Evidence from Peru

Women’s Political Participation After Civil War: Evidence from Peru with Omar García-Ponce, Assistant Professor, Political Science, UC Davis

How does civil war violence affect female political participation? Using rich micro-level data, I investigate the legacies of Peru’s Shining Path insurgency on women’s engagement in local politics. Based on an original data set of candidates running for local councilors, and a difference-in-differences research design, I show that electoral gender quotas have been more successful in municipalities exposed to the insurgency than in those that remained unaffected, other things equal. However, while larger effects are observed in areas that were controlled by the insurgents, the positive effects of violence on female political participation are reversed in areas affected by sexual violence (mostly perpetrated by state forces), which underscores how different types of violence exert starkly divergent effects. These findings are not explained by structural changes induced by the conflict (e.g., changes in sex ratios). Instead, the evidence points to behavioral adjustments (coping strategies) linked to wartime experiences. Finally, I provide evidence that these effects persist across generations.

Omar García-Ponce is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Davis. Previously, he was a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Center for Global Development. His research focuses broadly on political and economic development, with emphasis on topics related to political behavior, crime, and conflict. He has two main lines of ongoing research. One examines how violence affects behavioral outcomes and the development of institutions. His second line of research is on the political economy of organized crime, with a regional focus on the U.S.-Mexico drug trade. His work has been published in the American Political Science Review, Electoral Studies, and the Journal of the European Economic Association.